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Passage to a Ringed World - NASA's History Office

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66 PASSAGE TO A RINGED WORLD<br />

Then, what are the internal structures<br />

of the satellites? Did they fully differentiate?<br />

Close flybys of the satellites<br />

entailing precise measurements by<br />

the RSS of gravitational perturbations<br />

will be able <strong>to</strong> determine which satellites<br />

have cores. Accurate measurements<br />

of the density of each satellite,<br />

coupled with spectroscopically deter-<br />

mined compositional information,<br />

will yield determinations of their bulk<br />

densities.<br />

And finally, what was the origin of<br />

Phoebe? Is it a captured Kuiper Belt<br />

object or a more pedestrian asteroid?<br />

Is its surface material related <strong>to</strong> the<br />

dark material on either Iapetus or<br />

Hyperion?<br />

With four years <strong>to</strong> investigate Saturn<br />

and its icy satellites, the Cassini–<br />

Huygens mission hopes <strong>to</strong> shed some<br />

light on the innumerable mysteries<br />

that remain about this solar system<br />

giant. Any answers that Cassini uncovers,<br />

of course, are equally likely<br />

<strong>to</strong> lead <strong>to</strong> even more questions.

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